The sea awoke at midnight from its sleep,
And round the pebbly beaches far and wide
I heard the first wave of the rising tide
Rush onward with uninterrupted sweep;
A voice out of the silence of the deep,
A sound mysteriously multiplied
As of a cataract from the mountain's side,
Or roar of winds upon a wooded steep.
So comes to us at times, from the unknown
And inaccessible solitudes of being,
The rushing of the sea-tides of the soul;
And inspirations, that we deem our own,
Are some divine foreshadowing and foreseeing
Of things beyond our reason or control.

Basic set up:

This is Longfellow's sonnet "The Sound of the Sea."

"The Sound of the Sea" is about nature and the imagination. The speaker listens to the crashing of the waves, and through that sound he is inspired: "inspirations, that we deem our own,/ Are some diving foreshadowing and forseeing/ Of things beyond our reason or control."

The sea, in other words, inspires the speaker's imagination. And through that inspiration the speaker is able to see deeper into the heart of things.

This is a sonnet, and it's very rhythmical. There are the rhyming stanzas, for example. There is the repetition of "sounds," as in the line: "A sound mysteriously multiplied."

The rhythm of these lines is very important because this is a poem about sound. It's a poem that's about the rhythm of the sea, and this rhythm is reflected in the musicality of the lines of the poem itself. In a super-neat trick, the sound of the poem is meant to mirror the very sound of the sea.